DADAAB REFUGEE CAMP, Kenya, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Somali refugees in Kenya are free to choose whether to go home, a top U.N. official said on Tuesday, despite many families saying debts accumulated to feed their children after cuts in rations are forcing them to return to a war zone.

NAIROBI, June 16 (Reuters) - Four people were killed and 11 injured when their landcruiser detonated a bomb planted on a road in northeast Kenya on Friday, a senior government official said, in the latest of a series of such attacks.

After three years of drought and failed harvests, Kenya is in the grip of a national crisis.

All eyes are on neighbouring Somalia and South Sudan – where the needs are indeed greater and more acute – but we must not forget the nearly 3 million Kenyans whose lives have been blighted by these extreme conditions.

Pest is a food security risk in a region already struggling with worsening drought

ADDIS ABABA, April 13 (Reuters) - Crop-eating caterpillars known as fall armyworms have damaged crops across southern Ethiopia, the latest country to be struck by the pests in a region already struggling with widespread drought and hunger, authorities said on Thursday.

LOIYANGALANI, Kenya, March 22 (Reuters) - Villagers in northern Kenya have begun to burn piles of animal carcases, hoping to head off an outbreak of disease as their livestock starve to death in the region's worst drought in five years.

The smell of death hangs heavily over Lake Turkana and dried animal corpses dot the cracked mud where the lake has receded, leaving boats stranded on the dry land.

Residents accuse local politicians of encouraging herders to bring cattle onto farms and ranches to drum up support for August elections

By Katharine Houreld

NAIROBI, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Armed cattle herders have been flooding onto farms and wildlife conservancies in drought-ravaged northern Kenya, leading to violence in which at least 11 people have been killed and a tourist lodge torched, residents said on Thursday.

Climate change, growing world population and demands for industrialisation have put strain on global water supplies

By Michael Hogan

HAMBURG, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Greater global efforts should be taken to safeguard precious world water supplies to secure food production, the agriculture ministers of the group of 20 leading economies (G20) said on Sunday.

NAIROBI, Sept 15 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Kenya reaffirmed on Thursday its plan to close the world's largest refugee camp by November, rejecting allegations by Human Rights Watch (HRW) that it is harassing and intimidating Somali refugees to return home when it is not safe to do so.

MURANG'A, Kenya, April 15 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Samuel Kinuthia knows how to make the most of technology. Using a technique called basin terracing, he has boosted his income at his farm in Murang'a county, and helped provide Kenyans as far away as Nairobi with better access to clean drinking water.

BERLIN, Oct. 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Barren barley and wheat fields stretch across the dry landscape of northern Afghanistan, the result of persistent drought and flash flooding that has left thousands of people facing food shortages and loss of work.

NTURUKUMA, Kenya, July 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Central Kenya's Nturukuma region is not kind to farmers - its erratic rainfall, desert vegetation and drying riverbeds push most people into making a living through trade rather than agriculture.

KAKUMA, Kenya, June 20 (Reuters) - Kakuma camp in northern Kenya is expanding by nearly a half, the U.N. refugee agency said on Saturday, to house refugees fleeing nearby South Sudan as hopes fade for peace in the world's newest nation.

University attack the biggest in Kenya since 1998 (Adds comment by churchgoer)

By Edith Honan

GARISSA, Kenya, April 5 (Reuters) - Kenyan churches used armed guards to protect their Easter congregations on Sunday, days after gunmen from the Islamist al Shabaab group killed nearly 150 people at a Kenyan university.

GARISSA, Kenya, April 4 (Reuters) - Somali militants vowed on Saturday to wage a long war against Kenya and run its cities "red with blood" after the group's fighters killed nearly 150 people during an assault on a Kenyan university.